Artefacts are usually understood in contrast with natural kinds and conceived as a unitary kind. Here we propose that there is in fact a variety of artefacts: from the more concrete to the more abstract ones. Moreover, not every artefact is able to fulfil its function thanks to its physical properties: Some artefacts, particularly what we call “institutional” artefacts, are symbolic in nature and require a system of rules to exist and to fulfil their function. Adopting a standard method to (...) measure conceptual representation (the property generation task), we have experimentally explored how humans conceptualise these different kinds of artefacts. Results indicate that institutional artefacts are typically opposed to social objects, while being more similar to standard artefacts, be they abstract or concrete. (shrink)

Thinking about what the senses cannot grasp is one of the hallmarks of human cognition. We argue that “intangible abstracta” are represented differently from other products of abstraction, that goal-derived categorization supports their learning, and that they are grounded also in internalized linguistic and social interaction. We conclude by suggesting different ways in which abstractness contributes to cement group cohesion.

Both evolutionary and developmental research indicate that humans are adapted to respecting property rights, independently (and possibly orthogonally) of considerations of fairness. We offer evidence from psychological experiments suggesting that enforcing one's rights and respecting others' possessions are basic cognitive mechanisms automatically activated and grounded in humans' sensory-motor system. This may entail an independent motivation that is more profound than considerations of fairness and impartiality.

The role played by language in our cognitive lives is a topic at the centre of contemporary debates in cognitive (neuro)science. In this paper we illustrate and compare two theories that offer embodied explanations of this role: the WAT (words as social tools) and the LENS (language is an embodied neuroenhancement and scaffold) theories. WAT and LENS differ from other current proposals, because they connect the impact of the neurologically realized language system on our cognition to the ways in which (...) language shapes our interaction with the physical and social environment. Examining these theories together, their tenets and supporting evidence, sharpens our understanding of each, but also contributes to a better understanding of the contribution that language might make to the acquisition, representation and use of abstract concepts. Here we focus on how language provides a source of inner grounding, especially metacognition and inner speech, and supports the flexibility of our thought. Overall, the paper outlines a promising research program focused on the importance of language to abstract concepts within the context of a flexible, multimodal, and multilevel conception of embodied cognition. (shrink)

The extended mind view and the embodied-grounded view of cognition and language are typically considered as rather independent perspectives. In this paper we propose a possible integration of the two views and support it proposing the idea of “Words As social Tools” (WAT). In this respect, we will propose that words, also due to their social and public character, can be conceived as quasi-external devices that extend our cognition. Moreover, words function like tools in that they enlarge the bodily space (...) of action thus modifying our sense of body. To support our proposal, we review the relevant literature on tool-use and on words as tools and report recent evidence indicating that word use leads to an extension of space close to the body. In addition, we outline a model of the neural processes that may underpin bodily space extension via word use and may reflect possible effects on cognition of the use of words as external means. We also discuss how reconciling the two perspectives can help to overcome the limitations they encounter if considered independently. (shrink)

Recent theories on abstract concepts and words (ACs), such as Words As social Tools (WAT) (Borghi et al., 2019b) and Language is an Embodied Neuroenhancement and Scaffold (LENS) (Dove, 2019) have underlined the crucial role of both sensorimotor experience and language for ACs representation and use [see Dove et al. (2020), for a comparison]. Here we focus on the WAT view. WAT highlights the role of language, sociality, and inner grounding (interoception, metacognition) for ACs. Furthermore, WAT seeks to integrate a (...) developmental perspective with approaches focusing on conceptual use and brain representation. We briefly illustrate evidence coming from both clinical and non-clinical populations and identify areas where additional evidence that ACs evoke linguistic, social, and interoceptive experience is still needed. (shrink)

This content analysis examines the ways that genocide is included in the high school world history content standards of eleven states with legislative mandates requiring genocide education, as well as if the content standards in those states differ from those of states without mandated genocide education. The null curriculum theorizes that the content that is not taught may be as important as what is taught; this lens allows for a nuanced analysis of the ways that genocide is included and excluded (...) in state standards. The findings suggest that states with legislative mandates requiring genocide education do not necessarily have high school world history content standards that require genocide education. The content standards in states with legislative mandates often omit acts of genocide, refrain from using the term “genocide,” and frame genocides as less important than the Holocaust, perpetuating the null curriculum of genocides. (shrink)

In this introduction to part 3 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics,” the journal's editor argues that, apart from sortition, the best guarantees of safety in a democracy are, first, to augment judicial oversight of all political processes and, second, to exclude politicians from the process of selecting judges. “There can never be too much judicial interference,” he writes, “in what politicians regard as their domain.” The author reached this conclusion during attempts by the newly elected Israeli government, in the (...) spring of 2023, to make itself absolute by eliminating checks on its conduct that the Supreme Court had been developing and applying since the 1950s. Traditional Jewry and Judaism being notoriously hypernomian, the resistance to legality on the part of the ruling coalition has conveyed an aura of antinomian heresy. The choice in Israel appears to be between antipolitics and antinomianism, rather than between Left and Right politically—and the antipolitical model in Israel of a superintendent judiciary and an autonomous attorney general is arguably superior to the American prototype, even from the perspective (“all men are created equal..., endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”) that we have come to regard as quintessentially American. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Psychedelic substances have great promise for the treatment of many conditions, and they are the subject of intensive research. As with other medical treatments, both research and clinical use of psychedelics depend on our ability to ensure informed consent by patients and research participants. However, some have argued that informed consent for psychedelic use may be impossible, because psychedelic experiences can be transformative in the sense articulated by L. A. Paul (2014). For Paul, transformative experiences involve either the acquisition of (...) knowledge that cannot be obtained in any other way or changes in the self. Either of these characteristics may appear to undermine informed consent. This article argues, however, that there is limited evidence that psychedelic experiences are transformative in Paul's sense, and that they may not differ in their transformative features from other common medical experiences for which informed consent is clearly possible. Further, even if psychedelic experiences can be transformative, informed consent is still possible. Because psychedelic experiences are importantly different in several respects from other medical experiences, this article closes with recommendations for how these differences should be reflected in informed consent processes. (shrink)

This article undertakes a deconstructive reading of astrobiology’s search for extraterrestrial life. Taking its lead from Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’, it explores ‘metaphor in the text of astrobiology’—and includes within the astrobiological ‘text’ not only scientific publications and work on astrobiology in the philosophy of science, but also ‘life detection technologies’. I situate astrobiology in the tradition of a metaphysical analogy that goes back through the enlightenment and early modern astronomy to the ancient Atomists’ notion of the ‘plurality of worlds’. This (...) analogy, which constitutes an identification of life with being and therefore serves as the conceptual basis for the notion that life must exist on other worlds, experiences a mutation in the middle of the twentieth century when molecular biology refigures life in terms of a scriptural metaphor as text. The result is an aporia whose logic Derrida formalised in ‘White Mythology’. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that Derrida’s writing on the impossibility of justice has the potential for fruitful dialogue with Ruth Chang’s contemporary account of practical rationality. For Derrida, making a just decision must always come with a moment of undecidability, a “leap” into the unknown with an experience of doubt and anxiety that continues to “haunt” the decision-maker. By contrast, in her work on rationality, Chang proposes that hard decisions are difficult to make because the alternatives are “on a (...) par,” such that there are no rational differences between the alternatives that would contribute to choosing one over the other. Hard decisions are made by expressing one’s own rational agency, generating will-based reasons to commit to or “drift” into one of the alternatives. Derrida writes of anxiety, doubt, and impossibility, yet Chang writes of commitment, agency, and rationality. Despite these differences, there are important comparisons and connections between the two accounts that are worth exploring. I suggest that the moment of the decision which Derrida describes as heterogeneous to knowledge can be understood as a moment of parity in which there is a lack of given reasons, as explained by Chang. Chang’s account of rational agency provides an interpretation of how decision-making is possible despite the undecidability as described by Derrida. This notion of commitment and agency as explained by Chang is not incompatible with Derrida’s insistence that the responsible decision is haunted by anxiety and doubt. Instead, I suggest that Derrida’s writing highlights uncertainty as central to understanding the nature of hard choices and how to navigate the demands of justice. (shrink)

The alienation of labour is both classical and contemporary. In its classical form, it speaks to the potential dehumanisation of workers in capitalist societies. In its contemporary form, it manifests itself in the disenfranchisement of the individual because of changes in organised global workplaces. Over the years, Africa’s labour transition from traditional spirituality to contemporary organised global workplaces has fuelled new forms of public labour alienation. Civil servants, in some African countries, experience labour alienation reminiscent of work under capitalism. This (...) is in contradiction to the pre-colonial and traditional view of work as a vocation. Zimbabwe is undergoing negative economic, social, and political growth that has resulted in the alienation of civil servants. The government reneges on its public role of providing space for individual growth and well-being in preference for ‘public capitalism’ and cultural alienation. The potential for an effective public service lies in changing the work culture. Contribution: This article interrogates the impacts of the work culture within the public service in Zimbabwe in an attempt to proffer a return to the African traditional spirituality of work that was founded on the principles of ubuntu. It recognises the traditional symbiotic relationship between being and doing among the indigenous African communities as the panacea for the continent’s human capital development. (shrink)

It is impossible to deduce the properties of a strongly emergent whole from a complete knowledge of the properties of its constituents, according to C. D. Broad, when those constituents are isolated from the whole or when they are constituents of other wholes. Elanor Taylor proposes the Collapse Problem. Macro-level property p supposedly emerges when its micro-level components combine in relation r. However, each component has the property that it can combine with the others in r to produce p. Broad’s (...) nondeducibility criterion is not met. This article argues that the amount of information required for r is physically impossible. Strong Emergence does not collapse. But the Collapse Problem does. Belief in Strong Emergence is strongly warranted. Strong Emergence occurs whenever it is physically impossible to deduce how components, in a specific relation, would combine to produce a whole with p. Almost always, that is impossible. Strong Emergence is ubiquitous. Word counts. (shrink)

The ineffectiveness of some elders and deacons of Maranatha Reformed Church of Christ to implement their functions and duties contributed to the deterioration of the spiritual and material sustainability of the church. To counteract this corrosion, the church established a training team that instituted an informal programme as a means of revitalising elders and deacons. After running a pilot project to test the training programme, the team presented its report to the General Church Assembly. A selective interpretation of informal education (...) can contribute to a misguided and limited perception of informal knowledge and acquisition as uncivilised and unsustainable. In this article, the researcher seeks to articulate the formal and informal dynamics of informal education. He employed an exploratory concurrent design of mixed methods research within an indigenous paradigm to analyse the report on training of elders and deacons. The researcher used a convenience sampling strategy to select the authors of the report, namely four trainers and four trainees, with whom he conducted a focus group discussion. Although strategically formulated, the learning activities and resources were continuously innovated in the informal programme for elders and deacons. The conclusion reached is that the learning process in informal education is flexible and mutually edifying for educators and trainees.Contribution: Education for the proclamation of the gospel and church governance is not intended exclusively for ministers or theologians. Despite their diversity, elders and deacons need to be educated on the proclamation of the gospel according to the teachings of their church, using their respective contexts. Informal education, which comprises formal and informal dynamics, can contribute towards addressing the problem of untrained elders and deacons. (shrink)

Human social interaction is varied, complex and always changing. How we perceive each other and ourselves, how individuals interact within groups, and how groups are structured--all these are the domain of social psychology. Many have doubted, however, that a full-fledged social psychology textbook can successfully be written from a Christian perspective. Inevitably, some say, when attempting to integrate theology and social psychology, one discipline must suffer at the expense of the other. Angela Sabates counters that thinking by demonstrating how these (...) two disciplines can indeed be brought together in a fruitful way. She crisply covers key topics in social psychology, utilizing research that is well grounded in the empirical and theoretical literature, while demonstrating how a distinctively Christian approach can offer fresh ideas and understandings. Why doesn t our behavior always match what we say we believe? How and when are we most likely to be persuaded? What is the social psychology of violence? How reliable are eyewitness testimonies? Are racism and prejudice on the decline or are we just better at hiding them? Sabates draws out the implications of a Christian view of human persons on these and other central subjects within the well-established framework of social psychological study. This volume is for those looking for a core text that makes use of a Christian theological perspective to explore what the science of psychology suggests to us about the nature of human social interaction. (shrink)

The following essay considers Luis de Losada’s thinking with respect to the scholastic dispute between univocity and analogy. Noteworthy is the fact that the conclusions he reaches are at odds with those of Francisco Suarez, whom the younger Jesuit otherwise regards with unmitigated filial devotion. Though Losada differs from his master regarding analogy, the position he puts forth capitalizes upon a distinction between a logico-semantic perspective and a metaphysical perspective. The result is an irenic balance among all the schools (Thomistic, (...) Scotist, and Jesuit) regarding univocity and analogy. Nevertheless, Losada goes beyond the discussions dividing proponents of analogy and those of univocity when he inquires whether any kind of analogical community obtains between real being and beings of reason. Remarkably, he answers that there is a univocal community, thereby embracing the scholastic notion of supertranscendentality. (shrink)

Given a rich environment, how do we decide on what information to use? A view of a single entity (e.g., a group of birds) affords many distinct interpretations, including their number, average size, and spatial extent. An enduring challenge for cognition, therefore, is to focus resources on the most relevant evidence for any particular decision. In the present study, subjects completed three tasks—number discrimination, surface area discrimination, and convex hull discrimination—with the same stimulus set, where these three features were orthogonalized. (...) Therefore, only the relevant feature provided consistent evidence for decisions in each task. This allowed us to determine how well humans discriminate each feature dimension and what evidence they relied on to do so. We introduce a novel computational approach that fits both feature precision and feature use. We found that the most relevant feature for each decision is extracted and relied on, with minor contributions from competing features. These results suggest that multiple feature dimensions are separately represented for each attended ensemble of many items and that cognition is efficient at selecting the appropriate evidence for a decision. (shrink)

Prospective memory (PM) is the accurate execution of an intention in the future. PM may be negatively impacted by negative affect, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Rumination may increase the frequency of task-irrelevant thoughts, which deplete attentional capacity and reduce performance. To date, no studies have examined state and trait rumination on an online measure of PM. The present study examined the effects of state and trait rumination on an event-based, focal PM task embedded within a one-back task over (...) multiple sessions. 95 non-depressed adults (18–53 years) completed measures of state/trait rumination, mood, and PM on at least two occasions. Using multi-level modelling, we found that a derived measure of trait rumination, but not an established trait rumination survey, nor negative mood, predicted poorer PM accuracy. These novel findings demonstrate that trait rumination may partially underlie the association between negative affect & PM in a non-clinical sample, and highlight the potential of online methods to study PM. (shrink)

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a complex and continually evolving brain region that remains a primary focus of research due to its multifaceted functions. Various studies and analyses have significantly advanced our understanding of how the ACC participates in a wide spectrum of memory and cognitive processes. However, despite its strong connections to brain areas associated with hippocampal and olfactory neurogenesis, the functions of the ACC in regulating postnatal and adult neurogenesis in these regions are still insufficiently explored. Investigating (...) the intricate involvement of the ACC in neurogenesis could enhance our comprehension of essential aspects of brain plasticity. This involvement stems from its complex circuitry with other relevant brain regions, thereby exerting both direct and indirect impacts on the neurogenesis process. This review sheds light on the promising significance of the ACC in orchestrating postnatal and adult neurogenesis in conditions related to memory, cognitive behavior, and associated disorders. (shrink)

Two kinds of claims of responsibility arise in regard to health and medical care. Claims of one kind are obligation-limiting claims about individuals’ responsibility for coming to need health care. It may be argued, for example, that individuals have no claim to state-sponsored care for injuries they suffer as a result of risky activities such as mountain climbing, sky diving, or smoking. The claim is that because they are responsible for what has happened to them, others are not obligated to (...) pay for their care. In a different context, it is claimed that because patients are, or should be, responsible for the kind of treatment they receive. They therefore need to be informed about the treatment options available to them so that they can decide which of these treatments, if any, they will undergo. The lecture provides an account of responsibility that fits claims of both of these kinds and explains how they are related. (shrink)

Two kinds of claims of responsibility arise in regard to health and medical care. Claims of one kind are obligation-limiting claims about individuals’ responsibility for coming to need health care. It may be argued, for example, that individuals have no claim to state-sponsored care for injuries they suffer as a result of risky activities such as mountain climbing, sky diving, or smoking. The claim is that because these individuals are responsible for what has happened to them, others are not obligated (...) to pay for their care. In a different context, it is claimed that because patients are, or should be, responsible for the kind of treatment they receive. They therefore need to be informed about the treatment options available to them so that they can decide which of these treatments, if any, they will undergo. The lecture provides an account of responsibility that explains claims of both of these kinds and explains how they are related. There follows a response to comments by Peter Chau, dealing in particular with “libertarian paternalism” and with the adequacy of my value of choice account of responsibility. (shrink)

The literature on ‘institutional corruption’ has paradoxically missed what seems a central application of this expression, its application to institutions that are corrupt. In this article, I defend a view of what it is for an institution to be corrupt, in terms of the motivation of the institution’s rules. If an individual office-holder or role-occupant is corrupt when their actions are improperly motivated by private gain, then an institution is corrupt when the same can be said of its rules: the (...) institution’s rules are improperly motivated by private gain. Or if we should prefer a narrower account of corrupt conduct by individuals, as necessarily involving transactions with third parties, a correspondingly narrower account of an institution’s corruptness can also be given. Under either of these versions of my view, an institution’s being corrupt is to be distinguished from something else that might be called ‘institutional corruption’, namely the corruption of institutions, in the sense of their being degraded or undermined. I argue that some of the literature’s best-known accounts of ‘institutional corruption’ are best interpreted as being about the degrading of institutions, rather than about what it is for an institution to be corrupt. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry. Published in 2013, the centenary of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology, the chapter draws lessons from the last hundred years for the coming century. No predictions are made. Instead, five 'conditions for flourishing' are set out: 1) Particular Problems - the importance of focussing on well-defined particular problems rather than general theory building, 2) Product- orientation - remaining always responsibly product oriented in the specific sense that both sides (...) put in the work necessary to 'go deep' with each other's fields, 3) Partnership - working in partnerships of one kind or another, 4) Process - constant reflection on process based on peer review but leaving scope for the occasional rogue voice to cut innovatively against the grain, and 5) Q - a condition of a different kind, Q is an empirically derived measure of the balance between in-group cohesion and out-group openness required to support creativity. Illustrations are given of how these five conditions for flourishing have underpinned the rapid expansion of philosophy and psychiatry in the closing decades of the twentieth century, and, correspondingly, are also reflected in the Handbook as a whole. Overviews and commentaries on individual contributions to the Handbook are given in extended editorial introductions to each of its eight sections. (shrink)

Knowledge, theory of; Islamic philosophy; philosophy, Arab; interpretation and construction.

This book establishes the connection between the evolutionary scientific ideas of The Human Phenomenon and the Christian spirituality and theology of The Divine Milieu.

A novel Kabbalistic synthesis on the nature of consciousness.